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GRDI2020 wiki

Contents 1 About this wiki 2 Background 3 Roadmap 3.1 Topics 3.1.1 Topics Analysis 3.2 Recommendations 3.2.1 Technical recommendations 3.2.2 Organisational recommendations 3.3 Possible new topics and approaches

About this wiki

This is an online collaboration and brainstorming area for Global Research Data Infrastructure Visionaries.

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Background

The GRDI2020 project aims to identify challenges and recommendations to guide the creation of global infrastructures for research data. It is in line with influential guidance like the report by the High Level Expert Group on Scientific Data, and aims to extend them with more fine-granular (technical) recommendations.

The challenges and recommendations are being identified through an open community process, moderated by GRDI2020. This wiki is part of this community process, as well as face-to-face meetings with a rich outcome of position papers and other contributions by experts from all relevant fields pertaining to data infrastructures. The London workshop identified several challenges, that were used as the basis for the Cape Town workshop. The workshop discussions were very lively and came up with several ideas, conclusions and recommendations that are reflected in the following.

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Roadmap

Experts in the field of data infrastructure identified the following topic areas with challenges to be addressed on our way to global research data infrastuctures. Thereby, each topic may have both technical and organisational challenges. Distinct stakeholders may have different perspectives on the challenges, which - as well - is reflected in their descriptions.

Topics

For each of the following topic areas, it would be interesting to verify the analysis, find further examples where the issue is particularly acute and ideally even put a "price tag" to the issue (hidden costs caused by the issue and potential savings and new socioeconomic benefits that could be realised if the issue is solved).
(The descriptions of the topics aim to - more or less - follow this structure and answer these questions.)

Topics Analysis

• Data Storage
• Data Interoperability
• Data Discovery
• Data Provenance and Trust
• Data Curation and Preservation
• Data Security
• Funding, Sustainability and Governance
• Data Policy - Open Access
• Data Use - Virtual Research Environments
• Training and Education

Recommendations

The following draft recommendations were made at the and of the workshop. In addition to attempting to verify them, it would be useful to list exceptions to them and identify entities (organisations or groups) that could act as champions in implementing these recommendations.
(The descriptions of the challenges aim to - more or less - follow this structure and answer these questions.)

Technical recommendations

• Develop and devise easy-to-use service interfaces
• Define reference SLAs to cluster data retention requirements
• Research mechanisms to execute user software close to the data
• Support disciplinary data infrastructures in building networks of boundary objects
• Research and deploy services to cover a mediation function
• Implement data lifecycle management into and across data infrastructures
• Facilitate interoperability across preservation infrastructures
• Enhance automation in administrative workflows for data and services

Organisational recommendations

• Libraries and data centers
• Translator Role
• Link data management and grant process
• Embed data management into research lifecycle
• Collate, categorise and learn from best practices for sustainable data infrastructures
• Identify and promote best practices for data curation as part of good scientific practice
• Create a multi-tiered framework for certification of repositories
• Make the costs of data infrastructure transparent
• Citations to data
• Promote the use of scalable authentication and authorisation mechanisms by research data providers
• Foster auditing and accounting mechanisms for research data providers

Possible new topics and approaches

Issues that could be considered as complementary topics or approaches for the next workshops, in addition to the material described in the GRDI2020 deliverables:

• The concept of a Boundary object: what it means in itself (technical, organisational and management context) and how it is related e.g. to the Translator Role